Samsung Galaxy S3 - its out

Ok, so yesterday, I noticed that my phone kept vibrating in my pocket every minute or so. Thinking that I maybe put it into silent mode, I took it out to see that it's rebooting every 30 seconds or so.

I'll see the Samsung logo, then the CyanogenMod logo, and then, depending on some random criteria, it will either freeze for 5-10 seconds and reboot, or go to my lock screen. After which, I'll have anywhere between 5 and 20 seconds before it freezes and reboots again.

I've tried restoring a month-old backup for CM10.1, same thing.I've tried a factory reset and restoring the stock i747 4.1.1 ROM that Samsung provides... same thing.

WTF happened to my phone??

The only thing I can think of is that some rooted app auto-updated and caused some kind of problem.... but then why would it be persistent across a nuke of the phone?

Have you any ROMs and kernels stored on the internal memory of the phone? Try doing a complete wipe, flash a random ROM and compatible kernel, and try again.

Ok, so yesterday, I noticed that my phone kept vibrating in my pocket every minute or so. Thinking that I maybe put it into silent mode, I took it out to see that it's rebooting every 30 seconds or so.

I'll see the Samsung logo, then the CyanogenMod logo, and then, depending on some random criteria, it will either freeze for 5-10 seconds and reboot, or go to my lock screen. After which, I'll have anywhere between 5 and 20 seconds before it freezes and reboots again.

I've tried restoring a month-old backup for CM10.1, same thing.I've tried a factory reset and restoring the stock i747 4.1.1 ROM that Samsung provides... same thing.

WTF happened to my phone??

The only thing I can think of is that some rooted app auto-updated and caused some kind of problem.... but then why would it be persistent across a nuke of the phone?

Ok, it might be a system board/hardware problem. I had one of the first S3 from Korea. About 9 months into its life, it suddenly rebooted on its own and suddenly, continually reboot and/or hung at the "Samsung" logo. I had to send it into let the service personally replace the system board.

First I tried restoring a backup... no go. It would restore fine, but then continually reboot shortly after booting up.Then I tried a clean CM 10.1 ROM. Same thing.Then with a rooted Samsung ROM. Same thing.Then with a STOCK Samsung ROM. Same. Fucking. Thing.

Then I noticed something.... the reboot always happened shortly after Windows would pop up its "We found this device, what do you want to do with it?" dialog.

Grasping at any straw I could find, I unplugged it from my PC and tried to reboot. It stayed up. I installed a few apps. Still good...

So I tried installing CWM and then installing the CM 10.1 ROM. Still good....

At the end of the day, I finally got everything up and running again. But apparently, having it plugged into my PC when it was rebooting was causing it to reboot for some reason

I haven't tried connecting it since I've gotten it restored, and I don't really want to. Plus, it doesn't solve the larger issue of why the heck my phone decided to enter the reboot loop to begin with on Friday.

OK.Stoopid newbie question. Never had a smartphone and my current phone is a crummy LG Rumor. Wife and I are going to reup with Sprint and get new phones. She is going to go with the Iphone5, and I....was undecided till not that long ago.

We went to the Sprint store a couple of weeks ago and I was going to get a Galaxy Nexus (free) over a Galaxy S2, but they didnt have any Nexus' at the store so we left with nothing. Tonight I was looking at the Sprint site and they now seem to have a special with the S3 being free (w/ 2 yr contract).

Probably going to get the wife out later today to get phones. Just want to check to see from y'all if there is any reason NOT to get the S3 over something like the Galaxy Nexus?

Just want to check to see from y'all if there is any reason NOT to get the S3 over something like the Galaxy Nexus?

Not really, see this comparo. The S3 has better CPU, an SD card slot and better battery.Only disadvantage I can see is if you insist on a phone coming OOB with the stock Google software rather than a Samsung-branded or carrier-branded OS.

That said, you have played around with the S3 in person and are happy with the form factor, yes?

Thx, I must have stumbled on something that was either a very limited online offer, or a glitch on their website.

I just went to the sprint site and that free offer for the s3 is now gone . Shoulda snapped it up when I saw it at the time, it probably went off special at midnight Pacific Time or something. I've got some time to see if they lower the price again or something.

IF you are eligible for an upgrade with your current contract, you might ask if they can do a deal with the phones. Especially if they are going to lock you into a 2-year contract anyway, might as well try to sweeten it for yourself

Goddamnit. I ordered the Otterbox Commuter and it came today. I tried installing the screen protector but there was already dust on it and it was making stupid bubbles so thats out. Then I wrapped the rubber lining around phone, then installed it in the shell. The power button requires a lot of force to turn on, and adjust volume is impossible with one hand. I fucking bought this thing because I felt the S3 in naked form would fall out of my hands too easy, but this goddamn case makes it even easier for it to jump out of my hand. Seriously, adjusting the volume requires 2 hands.

Cant I just find a simple friggin case that mimics the Nexus 7 perforated rubber and provides some level of protection. Think I shoulda gone with the UAG case instead.

Too stupid and lazy to send it back so I guess I'll just have to get used to it. I did get the mountek CD slot mount kit and it works fine on my car with the commuter. Just wish the side buttons didn't require so much force.

Goddamnit. I ordered the Otterbox Commuter and it came today. I tried installing the screen protector but there was already dust on it and it was making stupid bubbles so thats out. Then I wrapped the rubber lining around phone, then installed it in the shell. The power button requires a lot of force to turn on, and adjust volume is impossible with one hand. I fucking bought this thing because I felt the S3 in naked form would fall out of my hands too easy, but this goddamn case makes it even easier for it to jump out of my hand. Seriously, adjusting the volume requires 2 hands.

Looks like you missed my reply to your post here, where I said re the Commuter:

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I've heard lots of complaints about the highly-recommended-for-the-iPhone Otterbox Commuter version for the S3: Buttons are very hard to press, and case removal is difficult, an issue if you need frequent access to battery or microSD card.

Mindphaser wrote:

Cant I just find a simple friggin case that mimics the Nexus 7 perforated rubber and provides some level of protection. Think I shoulda gone with the UAG case instead.

Like I mentioned, I have this that I'm very happy with; a friend has this one ditto.

The wife and I picked up a pair of S3's yesterday. She was going to go with the iphone 4s until she saw what i was going to get and liked the larger screen better. I picked up an Otterbox Commuter for my phone and the wife got a different case for hers. Ya the Commuter buttons are a bit hard to use, but it really isnt that bad. The Sprint guy put the cases on and of course on mine, he got a speck of dust/dirt under the screen protector right in the middle of the screen. I'm going to leave it for now though. Can you actually take the protector off, clean the screen and reattach it or is it better to just get a new screen protector?

I'm really going to have to go through all of the pages of this thread to get some tips and stuff.

Right now I just have two questions.#1) Any must have apps that I should get? This is really my first smart phone so I know nothing about the apps available and what I should have.#2) The guy at sprint said swype sucks and we should go with swiftkey. I didnt try swype, but did install the trial for swiftkey, and it is sure different because i have never used something like that (never texted much). Swiftkey seems cool, but just would like some input on what you guys think is better.

Alright, my SCH-I535 has begun the 'random reboot' thing. Only twice has it done this while connected to power. Most other times, it just vibrates a few times, and then reboots.

Running CM10.1-M3, if that matters. Annoying. ¬_¬

I'm just thinking I might have to do a full wipe, and reinstall of CM10.1-M3. I've been messing with the I/O Scheduler, underclocking (just the max CPU speed, really), and forcing it to use the GPU (instead of hardware overlays).....I don't think I've really changed anything else that might cause this random rebooting situation

Woah. Got the latest update, with the multi-window and such, and it kills the battery. Took the phone off the charger at 6:30am, and I'm at 25% already. 4.5 hours: 75% drain. What. The fuck. I don't even have the new features turned on!

On updating from ICS to JB (4.1.2), I noticed that the screen on max brightness takes up a lot more juice than it used to (to the point that the 0.7A car charger I had could no longer keep the phone charged with satnav working, which has the screen on fulltime; things are OK with a 1A charger). I suspect Samsung modified the brightness range to allow a higher max.

I suspect Samsung modified the brightness range to allow a higher max.

I have heard the same things from people I know with the S3 on Jelly Bean. I can't confirm since I'm not running TouchWiz anymore, but I gather that Samsung made the decision to quiet the people who complained that the screen was too dim even at full brightness.

Screen brightness may well be it. I did not shut down any services as Genome suggested but rather set my brightness to the lowest setting. And I adjusted my screen lock time to two minutes rather than the ten I had it set at before.* That seems to have helped, because I'm at 75% right now rather than ~50% at the same time yesterday.

Frustratingly, most morning screen activations are caused by notifications (calls, messages, alerts, etc), not my interaction with the phone. (Most of my emails arrive between 6AM and 11AM.) To make matters worse, the screen lights up at full brightness regardless of my own setting - so the phone was going ultra-bright for ten minute stretches. It would be very helpful to be able to adjust the screen brightness for notification activities - or, better yet, to have the option to prevent the screen from lighting up for anything other than phone calls (and user interaction, of course).

I don't actually know what helps the most right now, adjusting brightness to lowest setting or lowering screen time. I suspect the latter.

*Had it set to ten minutes because of various apps that I use without touching for a few minutes

And I adjusted my screen lock time to two minutes rather than the ten I had it set at before.* That seems to have helped, because I'm at 75% right now rather than ~50% at the same time yesterday.

The screen is usually by far the most significant user of battery on the phone, absent a immense cellular data transfer.Settings --> Battery will give you the rough breakdown, and there are any number of utility apps that do graphs & statistics if you need to analyze it deeper.

I don't use a lock screen at all, but one minute on the display auto-off timer works well for me, if used in conjunction with the Smart Stay functionality (Settings --> Display --> Smart Stay). If you haven't experimented with it, it's worth a shot.

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I don't actually know what helps the most right now, adjusting brightness to lowest setting or lowering screen time. I suspect the latter.

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Frustratingly, most morning screen activations are caused by notifications (calls, messages, alerts, etc), not my interaction with the phone. (Most of my emails arrive between 6AM and 11AM.) To make matters worse, the screen lights up at full brightness regardless of my own setting - so the phone was going ultra-bright for ten minute stretches.

That's strange -- for me, the phone always uses the system-wide brightness setting (except when using the native browser, which has its own separate setting).

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better yet, to have the option to prevent the screen from lighting up for anything other than phone calls (and user interaction, of course).

It's possible -- that's the way I have it set up, using Light Flow Lite; besides its main purpose of using different LED colors for different notification types, so you can tell what happened when you weren't near the phone & the screen is off, it's a pretty flexible general notification manager, and has the option of not turning the screen on at all on a notification, or just turning it on for 5sec, on a per-notification-type basis.

I consider it the most important general usability tool I have on the phone, and surprised that Samsung didn't include this functionality in the box (I think it's slightly improved on the S4, but still not as flexible).

The screen is usually by far the most significant user of battery on the phone

Normally, but typically a "WTF it's been four hours and the battery is dead" situation is called by a misbehaving app that won't let the phone go into sleep mode. If the phone isn't sleeping 90% of the time, the battery life is going to take a dive.

Ars of Ares does Auto Brightness not work for you? I don't know if you can do this in the stock TW ROM, but I noticed in CM 10.1 that you can adjust at what brightness it brightens and dims, in lux the phone detects, and percent of the phones' brightnesss.

Frustratingly, most morning screen activations are caused by notifications (calls, messages, alerts, etc), not my interaction with the phone. (Most of my emails arrive between 6AM and 11AM.) To make matters worse, the screen lights up at full brightness regardless of my own setting - so the phone was going ultra-bright for ten minute stretches.

Huh, I seem to remember being annoyed that my phone didn't light up when I got an email notification or message notification. Now I use CM, and other apps for mail and messaging (ChompSMS FTW), so they pop up, and it's no longer a concern.

Ars of Ares does Auto Brightness not work for you? I don't know if you can do this in the stock TW ROM, but I noticed in CM 10.1 that you can adjust at what brightness it brightens and dims, in lux the phone detects, and percent of the phones' brightnesss.

As of JB4.1 on the Samsung firmware, the auto-brightness response curve can be adjusted on a simple slider (in ICS the curve was fixed), but not as flexibly as you describe. In bright daylight (320 days a year here) Auto Brightness simply isn't good enough here, and I have to set it manually at 80%-100%.

Ingress just updated, and now it runs in the background. Of all the apps discharging the batter, Ingress - in the background - takes up 15% of the pool, the #2 slot (behind screen). And you can't force stop it. Clearing the memory does nothing. I've uninstalled it and emailed the dev. I hope they do something, but I'm not holding my breath.

Ok Im getting really confused here. Over the last day or 2 I've noticed when typing, say a review on Play, if I choose an auto-correct word, it will replace much of the whole fucking post with that auto corrected word placed in a weird spot. So I did some google searching and came upon this thread. So I followed the steps in the last post of that thread, i.e clear the cache/data from the Samsung Keyboard app. There was no option to clear cache, but I did clear data.

So I go back and now I have a totally differently looking keyboard. Came to find it its Swype. Thing is I never installed it. I never wanted it. I go into Play store and see that neither Swype apps are listed as bought or installed.

Im really friggin confused as to whats going on here. Im on US Cellular, but I dont recall seeing some promo for a free version or something. So how the hell did Swype get on my phone. It makes no sense. It only showed up AFTER I clear data for the Samsung Keyboard? dafuq...

edit: Sigh, so I disabled Swype, rebooted and the old keyboard came back, but the bug with auto predict is stil there. I guess dont use auto correct at all. Great..

I've tried it, didnt much care for it on my N7. Frankly I had no problems with the stock keyboard. Just wonder how the hell Swype ended up being the default keyboard on my phone when I never downloaded it.

I'm hoping someone can save me from having to reading hundreds of posts on the xda forums.

What's the best way to root the S3? T-Mobile version if that matters. It can be rooting with some program, installing a different recovery and then installing a rooted version of stock, or ...?

Basically I just want rooted stock. All because there is no way to turn off the sound the phone makes when plugging in the charger. I don't want to wake my wife up if she happens to go to bed before I do. I've googled and googled but I can't find any way to turn off that sound without rooting. Stupid.

I used an older version of some of those root methods, but I am also on Verizon, so I had to unlock the bootloader as well. After that, I believe it auto-installs a recovery for you. Then you do a full wipe, and flash your ROM.

Just remember to read through everything, make sure you've downloaded everything you need before doing anything, and you should be all set!